Inside Lane | High School Track Blog Week 5

Seattle Prep’s Hardy Back on Track

Given the chance, Joe Hardy would do it differently. That doesn’t change the facts, nor the positives the Seattle Prep senior now understands came from the experiences of his junior spring.

“Essentially last year, I violated team policy,” Hardy said.

That violation cost him a chance to defend the 3,200 meters state title he won as a sophomore. It cost Hardy a chance to compete at all at the state meet last spring.

But his mistake also made Hardy take a closer look.

“It really is what I’ve learned,” Hardy said. “I really realized that I loved to run. I loved the competition. It’s made me more mature. Not just as a runner, but as a person.”

The new version of Joe Hardy that emerged still is a work in progress.

Yes, he’s secured his collegiate scholarship and will run cross country and track at the University of Wisconsin beginning in the fall. Yes, he currently holds the fastest time in the state at 3,200 meters this spring at 8 minutes, 55.25 seconds.

But Hardy still is not where he wants to be completely.

“He’s getting tougher all the time,” Seattle Prep coach Deino Scott said. “Sometimes when you are that incredibly talented, people just expect you to go out and be the guy. Sometimes that can clash with your own expectations. And sometimes he can get caught up in the moment.”

One such moment came at the state cross country finals last fall.

Hardy entered the 3A state final looking to defend the title he won as a junior. Instead, North Central junior Tanner Anderson slipped past Hardy to finish in 14:44.83, just in front of Hardy’s runner-up time of 14:45.16.

It’s a race Hardy expected to win.

“That definitely affected me, though I wasn’t upset with my race,” Hardy said. “But I came into this (track) season and didn’t have a very good grasp on running track versus cross country. I didn’t race with a lot of confidence.”

As the post-season is drawing nearer, Hardy says that is changing. He’s getting the competition mentality back after missing his chances a year ago.

“Deep down inside, he knows he can compete with anybody,” Scott said. “When he gets that, gets totally into the competition, I wouldn’t want to be on the track with him.”

Hardy has shown how capable he is on the track this year. He competed and finished in among the top 8 in his events at Arcadia, Calif. – one of the premier meets on the West Coast – earlier this spring. At the Brooks Indoor, again against some of the best high school distance runners in the country, earlier in the year he finished second.

“He was looking around at the Dempsey (Center at UW), just taking it all in,” Scott said.

Hardy had to ask to be reinstated after last year.

“I had to show them I could be counted on to be trusted,” Hardy said. “I had to essentially get back my credibility.”

Scott says Hardy has done just that.

“We talk at our school about giving people second chances,” Scott said. “There are kids that are just bad eggs, and there are kids that make mistakes just being kids. Joe made a mistake. In a school setting, you have consequences.”

Those consequences cost Hardy some chances. But the mistake didn’t cost him everything. And as his senior season winds toward its conclusion, Hardy knows he is fortunate.

“When I reflect on it, it is kind of crazy how quickly it all went by,” Hardy said. “But I also reflect on how much is different in my life. I’m a teenager. Everybody expects you to have experiences like that. I wouldn’t necessarily go back and make the same mistake – there were a lot of consequences to it. But I’m also happy it happened at a time where it didn’t change 100 percent the path I was going down. It didn’t take away my life.”

Shoreline steps up for 35th year

More than 1,000 athletes from 78 schools descended on Shoreline Stadium in Seattle on Saturday for the 35th running of the Shoreline Invitational. The meet originally ran from 1974 to 1982.

When Shoreline High School closed, the meet shut down. It began again in 1989

from 1983-88. In 1989, the meet started up again as the Thunderbird Invitational. The name was changed back to Shoreline Invitational in 1994, with both

Shoreline high schools (Shorecrest and Shorewood) supporting the meet.

We will try to update this space with results late on Saturday.

Sprint Lanes

– If Federal Way’s Tyson Penn keeps this up, he’ll challenge the state record of 7-feet-1 in the high jump set back in 1980 by Brent Harken. Penn, a sophomore, leads the state this spring having already leaped 6-10½.

– The Bellevue 4×100 relay team came within one hundredth of a second of the state meet record in the event a year ago at 41.63 seconds. The Wolverines lead the state again this spring, already having gone 42.24 seconds before the post-season even has gotten started.

Invitationals of Note

The sum total of Invitational meets in the state are far too numerous to mention and discuss, but there are a few we wanted to be sure folks are aware of prior to league and district meets that start the week of May 6.

May 3 –Shelton Invitational (Shelton). 74 teams. It’s the 54th year for Shelton, another iconic meet. Teams from every classification compete here, as well.